CHANDLER, Ariz. — Editor's note: This story contains a graphic image of Courtney's injury.
Courtney Wood may have lost her ability to walk but she hasn't lost her will to get better.
The 33-year-old Chandler native is in the midst of recovering from a debilitating dirt bike crash that has paralyzed her from the waist down.
The collision additionally broke several of her ribs, collapsed her left lung, and broke her chest cavity.
But despite the severity of her injuries, Wood said she's optimistic about possibly regaining the strength to walk again.
“My spirit wasn’t broken at all, regardless of my situation,” Wood said.
The Basha High School graduate has been involved in extreme sports for many years and has had some close calls on the race track.
But she's never had an experience quite like the events that transpired on Nov. 21.
Wood said she was training that day at a track in Buckeye for an upcoming racing event in Las Vegas. Because her other dirt bike was in the shop, Wood was forced to ride her bigger bike around the track.
“If you barely give it just too much throttle, it really goes,” Wood said about the bike.
Just as Wood was finishing up the last section of the track, she drove through a section consisting of 10 humps and could suddenly feel herself start to lose her rhythm.
Some of the humps didn't appear to be well-groomed, Wood recalled, and she could feel her bike starting to buck.
“Next thing I know, it bucked me so hard that it threw my whole entire body off of the bike,” Wood said.
She went cartwheeling through the air before hitting the ground. Wood said she could feel her legs start to stiffen and was quickly losing her ability to breathe.
“It was the strangest feeling in the entire world,” Wood said.
Emergency crews rushed Wood to a nearby hospital, where she found out her spinal cord was remaining attached by only a few nerves. Wood said she was shocked when a surgeon showed her an x-ray of her back.
“It was unreal," she said. "It didn’t even look human.”
After a five-hour surgery, doctors repaired as much of they could by installing two rods in her back and waited to see how Wood would recover in the following days.
She's currently undergoing rehabilitation at a facility in downtown Phoenix and claims to have begun to feel some sensation in her hips again.
Wood said her love for dirt bikes began after a childhood friend gave her a ride on his bike. That same friend later died in a terrible collision involving his dirt bike.
Now, like her friend, Wood has experienced the danger that can come with operating a dirt bike. But Wood said her attitude about extreme sports hasn't changed and neither has her outlook on life.
Even if she never walks again, Wood said she'll depend on the horses she has on her Chandler property to help her get around.
“My horses can always be my legs and I’d be their eyes," she said. "We’d become one being.”
Wood's family has an online fundraiser that's collecting donations for medical bills and physical therapy. They're also planning a benefit on Feb. 20 at the John Volken Academy in Gilbert.
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